


Fight or Flight

by Kit



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang, Gen, Isabela laughing at her own jokes is a very important part of my life, Storytelling, Warden!Bethany, a murder of pickpockets, daft frame narratives, flying!, sneaky meta on magical types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 14:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2352200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a dark night in Antiva, and the pirate is going to die.</p><p>(now with <a href="">citrusconcerto's</a> wonderful art.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fight or Flight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [citrusconcerto](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=citrusconcerto).



> This was written for the Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang, in response to[citrusconcerto's]() art. Thank you for putting up with my injury induced delays and nervousness, and I hope this brings you joy.

**Fight or flight**

It is a dark night in Antiva, and the pirate is going to die. 

Isabela laughs when she thinks that. It’s a novel’s line, too pretty for the hand slipping— _slipping_ , blood and spit-slick and nearly nerveless—from one woman’s throat. There is a hand in her hair and a knee in her kidney, and getting done by a collection of fast pickpockets in a city full of assassins is _embarrassing_ , but she’s hamstrung. It’s five to one, and they are intent. One is an abomination, throwing sparks and twisting into a nightmare that fills the alley.  It is _exactly_ the sort of stupid, unfair, bloody minded—

—A hand covers her mouth. She bites.

Isabela is going to die. Nothing says she has to be quiet about it.

Light hits the sky. It hits _hard_ , fire tightening the skin of Isabela’s face and turning the alley’s darkness into a bruised, frail purple. Grips ease. Her body falls. Antivan curses hit the ground along with their knives and all five of them are staring, pressed flat to walls with hands they cannot see, their voices stolen by a wind that takes the flame’s heat and pushes it deep down their throats.

“And _that_ is a lesson in the dangers of magic.” 

Isabela’s head has met this filthy stretch of cobbles more times than is good for anyone. She knows it. Her aching eyes and cramping belly know it. Concussion, she thinks, explains the voice. Light and wry, a little rougher than she remembers. It has knee high boots to match. She groans.

“Why am I hallucinating _you_ , sunshine?” A pause. She forces open an eye to reassess the boots. “Not that isn’t enjoyable.”

“Isabela?”

A small crack in the voice. There is rush of sticky air that brushes jasmine and wrought iron against Isabela’s face. Her rescuer kneels by her head.

Curiosity is stronger than key tides. Isabela opens her other eye. 

Bethany Hawke has lines about her eyes and staff-shadows painted thick over her face. She holds out a slim, gloved hand. It’s throwing off sparks, and she glowers when Isabela’s grasp falters in her own.

“If this is a rescue,” Isabela says, “I am _not_ complaining. But you do show up in the strangest of places.”

Bethany snorts. “Stop talking,” she says. “I’m a pretty rubbish healer.”

Someone whimpers from the corner. Isabela grins.

It hurts.

It is glorious.

Bethany seems to catch it, her eyebrows softening, her mouth twitching up.

“Keep looking like that, sunshine, and you are going to get a _very_ enthusiastic hour of thanks.”

“Oh, hush.”

“I’m _serious_ —”

“You—” Bethany says, “Are seriously bleeding.”

Isabela doesn’t remember much about Bethany Hawke’s healings from the old days, but this is all pressure and itching and inward-things-turned-outward. She isn’t sure if she wants to laugh or throw up once her head stops spinning, and all of the blood on her body is cold. Bethany’s hands are underneath her, hauling her upright.

“You’re right,” Isabela mumbles. “I think you are pretty rubbish at that.”

“It’ll hold until I get you to someone better.” Bethany’s jaw is set, silver threads in her blue jerkin plucked out by every faint, drunken light off the alley. Her hands are still firm on Isabela’s back.

She shifts her weight, and Isabela is sure that the earth has just _kicked_ upward. It’s the only thing that makes sense out of movement that has the pair of them half in the air, Bethany’s staff beneath them.

“Hold on,” Bethany says, as if the world is sensible. “I have to concentrate.”

“Are we—”

Bethany laughs, soft by Isabela’s ear. “I’ve learned some odd things in all those strange places,” she says. “Force magic, sergeant magic, dashing rescues—”

“— _sergeant magic_?”

More laughter, rueful and warmer than the fingers on her skin. 

“It’s got a lot of shouting in it,” Bethany says. “Now, hush. More concentrating.”

Isabela stares down at the blurred streets of Antiva City, and swallows. “I am saying all _sorts_ of thank you at the other end of this.”

“Well,” Bethany says, tone distracted. “Thank the Maker for Warden stamina.”

 

* * *

Bethany puts Isabela to bed. This is a _fantastic_ way to start any thought, except that the Warden cell in Antiva City has taken the term to heart, and _bed_ really means: the narrow space in the corner that can’t be used for anything more useful. Bethany catches her tired distaste, and chuckles.

“It’s not so bad, you know.”

“It’s bad enough.” She wrinkles her nose. “I’ll consider it punishment for letting a murder of pickpockets overtake me.”

“A murder of—”

“—it was a _reference_ ,” Isabela groans. “Ow. My liver. Nevermind.”

“Keep still.” The cot does not squeak as Bethany perches on the end. You’d need springs for that. Isabela laughs at herself as the Warden pats her knee.

“What do I have to do to keep you here?” Bethany asks, words faltering as she realises exactly what shape they are. “Um. Maker. Don’t answer that.”

Laughter shouldn’t feel good. Not with a scraped throat and phantom hands still clutching at her, but Bethany is blushing, and Isabela is alive.

“What I want to know, sweet thing, is how you _got_ here.”

Isabela pauses, sparing a wistful thought for Varric.  He moves exalted circles, these days. But he’d always known how to coax words from people.

“Tell me a story?”

* * *

Bethany is ten, and glares at the tiny flame on her palm.

Her father sighs. It’s not much of a sound, clearer to her in the movement of his shoulders, the slow clench and release of his long, scarred hands that aren’t shaped like hers. Not at all.

“It’ll get easier,” he says, smiling and turning to face the sea. They’ve been in Gwaren nearly a year. The sea’s noise is like a body’s now, no louder than anyone's heartbeat unless you listen. Lessons are down the beach, the wind pulling hair from her braids and spells dying on grey sand.

“Other magic _is_ easier,” she mutters.

Da keeps smiling. “People see fire, or ice, and they think they understand it,” he says, his own magic steady and coalescing into easy, flickering warmth between cupped hands.  “They’re wrong, but that doesn’t matter.”

“I—”

“—If,” he says, as solid as Carver, body braced in a way that Bethany, with her flapping skirts and the ache in her jaw, feels foolish copying. “ _If_ you’re a mage who works with big things, bright things—

“—The Templars will come and say, ‘Thanks, Ser Mage. We saw you from three towns over!’”

Marian’s voice is bright and sisterly and familiar, and makes their father scowl.

“They won’t see _me_ ,” Bethany mutters, while Marian rolls her eyes and informs them that it is past time for dinner. “I’m useless at this.” 

Marian sighs. She’s better at sighing than their father, pitching it long and loud even when there the outside air snatches at them.

“Carver didn’t burn anything this time,” she says, kissing Da’s cheek in the fast, sneaky way that has meant, _Big sister_ for as long as Bethany can remember.  “Mother says we have to make an effort.” She slings a bony arm about Bethany’s shoulders.

The flame dies.

Frustration is spiky. It jitters, pressing up into her ribs and behind her eyes and chilling the sweat gathered at her lower back.

She grits her teeth, and there is enough magic in this place that she can feel her own weight, and the solid contrast between her body and the tricksome, shifting no-place of the Fade. She can feel her father’s stance through the soles of her feet: the ground _telling_ her that he moved, and that Marian was rocking on her heels.

“Bethy?”

Her head falls back. Her skin crackles, and the heaviness in her body turns into a living, directed thing that she sends out in spirals until no one is touching her.

Da is shouting, and Marian’s breathless laugh is the wildest thing on the beach.

She opens her eyes. Marian is half in the water, still laughing.

“You made me fly, little sister.” She stands, brushing sand from her trousers. “You should turn me into a dragon, next.”

“Um.” Bethany swallows. “Magic doesn’t work that way.”

“Ah, blast,” Marian’s grin is wistful. “You’re better at that then fire, though.”

“Don’t encourage her,” Da snaps. He turns to Bethany, and she knows that there’ll only be silence after dinner. Silence, and pinched, panicky looks until the next lesson.

“Force magic,” he says, “Is not something I can teach you.”

* * *

 “Well,” Isabela says, brought back to the tiny bed and Antivan morning sounds seeping in through the windows like steam by Bethany's ragged, indrawn breath. “ _That_ was stupider than the Orlesian port authority.”

Bethany blinks, then arches her back, joints popping. “Are they stupid?”

“Terribly, sweet thing. Are you going to question all my analogies?”

“Probably. Do you want me to keep going, or not?”

* * *

 When her father lays dying in Lothering, none of Bethany’s healing spells work. They are good ones. They have to be, for Bethany’s body to keep them. Tried, and true, and solid. And small. Worth nothing at all as his breathing slows and Carver says that she _has_ to be doing something, it’s just that they just can’t see it, not yet.

“You can do it, sister,” he says. “All those lessons—”

Bethany shudders. “It’s not—”

“—Carver,” Marian says. “Shut up.”

Bethany touches her father’s cheek and he rolls his head to the side. His lips move against her fingers.

“Da?”

She leans in, ignoring her siblings as best she can. “I’m here,” she whispers. A silly thing. Of course she’s here. Everyone’s here, and it will be Malcolm Hawke who leaves.

“Be careful,” he says. “Promise you’ll be careful.”

She finds, through the anger and fear and grief clawing at her chest, that she can pull enough Elemental magic to light her father’s pyre.

It feels like a beginning.

Beginnings break hearts. 

* * *

 ”Ah, sweet.” Isabela swallows, eyes sliding away from Bethany’s bent head. “That line sounds like one of mine.”

* * *

 _“_ _Join us in the shadows, where we stand vigilant. Join us._ _”_

Something is in Bethany’s skin, and she stumbles in the dark.

The Deep Roads have no air to spare. Her throat is swollen hard and tight, and closes with every step she takes. Stroud’s arm is heavy across her shoulders, one hand tangled in the back of her shirt. She’s scruffed, her breath drowned out by Stroud’s rapid, near-musical curses.

She’s going to be sick. She’s going to be sick and he _will not stop._

 _“_ This is foolishness.” Stroud shakes her, and she’s sure she can feel his heartbeat through the fingers bracketing the back of her neck. “Glory seekers in the Deep Roads. Your party had _no_ business here.”

 _“_ _I_ _—”_

 _“_ Do I look like I care what you have to say, little girl?”

“You’re the—the one—” coughs and crying and frothing bile. “—hauling _me_ , Ser Warden.”

“Shut up and move.” 

 _“_ _We carry the duty that cannot be foresworn. And should you perish_ _—”_

She falls. A hard sprawl, stones cutting her palms. Her own sweat turns the dirt to mud.

Stroud does not stop. He runs past her, swearing.

Bethany stares at the ground.

 _I_ _’_ _m sorry, sister. I_ _’_ _m going to die._

 _“—_ _Know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten. And that one day we shall join you._ _”_

Screaming. Someone is screaming. Not her. Not on the ground. It’s a death-hate-shiver-shrill- _shriek_ of sound that sounds like Carver all over again before it drips away into a man’s rapid breathing and a long, sucking pull. 

There is a shadow on her back.

“Sit up.”

Dirt in her mouth. Dirt, skin and sick, and—

—hands in her shirt. She knows that hold.

“Do you want to live, Fereldan?”

Stone. New stone. Upright stone. There are no more hands on her back, and new pressure at her lips.

“Open your eyes.”

A pause.

“Or just open your mouth. It hardly matters.”

* * *

”Maker, I shouldn’t have said that.” Bethany shudders, jolting out of the story with wide eyes and white-knuckled hands. “I should _not_ have—you didn’t—”

“—didn’t hear a very important secret that I suspect is even more disgusting than my imagination thinks it is?” Isabela shrugs. “I can live with that. No wonder you wanted to push Hawke down some stairs, though.”

Bethany’s laugh takes her by surprise.

“It saved my life,” she says.

“Awful things are still vile,” Isabela says. “No matter how many lives they save. It's like vegetables.”

“Well,” says Isabela. “Maybe that was a bad analogy.”

* * *

“Good, it wasn’t a waste.”

Bethany blinks, and then does it again, because the movement is effortless. All the tiny muscles in her face work. Her eyebrows draw together. Her fingers twitch.

“No one said your name. Careless of them,”

The voice again. Low, drawing. Recognizable.

Bethany squints, and cave walls crowd in out of the dark. She’s laying on loose rock that jabs into the back of her knees through her leggings, and the body behind the voice is a big one, leaning forward to lift her up by the shoulders.

“You’re Stroud,” she says.

“Well observed, ensign.”

“Pardon?”

“Your rank, as the newest of us,” he says, setting her into a seated position with efficiency makes her grit her teeth.

“My name,” she says, as her thoughts smooth out to match her breathing, and the steady strangeness of a body that no longer hurts, “Is Bethany.”

Stroud sniffs. “That is,” he says, “A start.”

* * *

”Please tell me,” Isabela says, “That you lose Stroud soon?”

“He wasn’t so bad,” Bethany says, sighing. “After a while, anyway. He's the one who promoted me. His last act, before he-” Bethany paused, swallowing. “He wasn't so bad. After this story.”

* * *

“Ah, good. You take her.”

They’ve been on the road for weeks, walking the twisting, hilly road to Weisshaupt. Dreams grow teeth, hunger feels endless. She has never walked so far, nor so well.

An elf in an incongruous mix of Dalish leather and Warden blue is staring at them, one hand balled into a fist, the other gripping her staff. She’s all angles and sneer, magic flickering over her skin and turning the air thick with pine and sulfur.

“Excuse me, shem?”

Stroud passes a hand over his eyes. “I outrank you, Velanna.”

“Funny thing,” the mage says, almost contemplative as she tilts her head to the side. “Ranks only matter when _both_ parties care.”

Stroud sighs. “Last I heard, you were heading to the Warden Commander.”

“Who says you have good hearing, old man?” Velanna shifts from foot to foot, narrowed eyes focusing on Bethany. “Doesn’t your friend know how to speak?”

“No one’s given me a reason to,” Bethany says, looking up at Stroud with weary distaste. “And I’m not a parcel.”

This, for some reason, makes the stranger smile.

“Better,” she says. “So. Who are you, shem?”

“Bethany,” she says. “Um. Stroud found me. In the Deep Roads.”

“Just what we need,” Velanna mutters. “More stupid humans.”

“Hey.” A new voice. A light, laughing tenor that stretches the word out into silly protest as a tall, broad shouldered man moves up behind Velanna in a mess of creaking, clanking armor. “I heard that.”

“That was the point.” Velanna does not bother looking over her shoulder.

The man takes off his helmet. “Don’t mind her,” he says, holding out his free hand. “Are you new? Stupid question. Sorry. Of course you are.”

“I’m—”

“—I’m Alistar,” he says, smiling. “And if you require escort to our fearless leader, then—”

“—what I need,” Bethany says, startled by the strength in her own voice, “Is a bath. And sleep. And then, maybe, the chance to smash an ogre into little bits.  Isn’t that what you do?”

Velanna laughs. “I think,” she says, “You might keep.”

“Coming from her,” Alistair says, “That is a terrifying recommendation.”

* * *

“And then you all kissed?”

There had been a pause for tea. Well. Tea for Bethany. Elfroot for Isabela. Antiva had woken up outside their window, clamorous with argument and and fish sales and a very persistent hawker extolling the virtues of saffron in wine.

Bethany regrets the tea now, spitting a mouthful back into her cup.

“I _know_ him, you know,” Isabela says, drawing her knees up and watching the shifting colours over her friend’s face. “Daft smile and pretty eyes? Terrible helmet hair? Good hands?”

Bethany mumbles into the teacup.

“Didn’t catch that, sweet thing.”

“…Verygood hands.”

* * *

 Everyone spars in Warden camps. Alistair is steady, testing her magic with Templar tricks that nearly had Bethany screaming the first time he tried them. There'd been hours of explanation after that. A lot of awkward shifting, and gestures in the air. Now, Bethany is used to him, and her small Elemantal gifts butt against his small Templar-driven skill, and both grow stronger for it.

Oghren, older than almost all of them, and the terror of new recruits, listens to the story of Carver's death in perfect, living silence. He is ferocious, and won't let her leave his sight until she can recite all the weak points on every Darkspawn she knows, and several she has never seen.

He puts a dagger in her hands and drops his own axe, only taking it up again when the blade cuts his weathered cheek.

The first time Velanna knocks Bethany on her arse with a well-placed branch, she laughs. She’s a whirl of bright eyes and teeth, their small crowd wincing from the sidelines.

The seventh time, she only glares.

“What sort of mage _are_ you?”

“I—”

“—because you have power.” The older woman throws up her hands. “Loads of that. No bloody question. But why do you keep trying to throw _ice_ at me?” She shakes her head, one finger pressed to Bethany’s sternum.  “Fire's better. You've worked with fire all your life, but if you're a true Elemantal,” she says, “Then keep me the hell away from mirrors, because I’ve turned into Oghren in the night.”

More laughter, and a salute from the dwarf. “This beard’s wasted on you, sweetheart.”

Velanna rolls her eyes. “Seriously, kid. Use what you have.”

“I _am_ ,” Bethany snaps. Her cheeks burn, her tongue is thick with anger and dirt.

Velanna is relentless. “You’re using what you’ve been taught,” she says. “Not the same thing.”

The first time Bethany knocks Velanna back with a wave of force strong enough that the elf is spewing curses and her own nose is bleeding, Alistair whoops from the audience, and Velanna blows her a kiss.

“Nicely done,” she admits, catching her lower lip between her teeth to stop a smile. “That was almostgood. I’ve got something for you.”

 _Something_ , with Velanna, means books. She has more of them than should be possible, when they are part of a group that is defined by not only movement, but speed.

The books follow her from room to tent to open camp. She fills blank pages. She mutters over words as Varric used to do, her cadences lovely even when they’re dipped in vinegar.

Bethany listens, her own fingers tracing force spells and diagrams of galvanic rings, and she wishes her Da could see her.

Stupid, really. The shock of it would kill him all over again.

“Thank you,” she says, just once. “For letting me read these.”

* * *

“And _then_ did you kiss?”

“No,” Bethany says, rolling her eyes. “But it is how I leaned a good dashing rescue.”

Isabela groans. “That is,” she says, “The most _anticlimactic_ thing I’ve ever—”

She stops. For the second time in recent memory, there is a hand over her mouth.

“Hush,” Bethany says. “I’ll tell you about possessed Golems, meeting Varric in Orlais, and the time Alistair got run out a bar just down the street for smiling at the wrong assassin, but I’m going to do it _later_.”

The Warden's smile is lopsided. “When you can laugh without wincing.”

Bethany snorts at the feeling of Isabela’s sigh against her palm. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed,” she says. “Rubbish healer or not, I’m not completely useless.”

“Sunshine,” Isabela says, shifting her head so Bethany’s hand falls away, “You were never that, and you are _wonderful_ now.”

It’s an easy thing, catching up that lost hand, just to kiss the back of it.

“I like a woman who makes a lot out of a bad beginning,” she says. “And you’ve done more than most.”

 


End file.
